The Top 10 Features to Watch Out for in Drupal 8

Ever since the word “Drupal 8” spread on the streets, tech bloggers have been updating their posts as soon as they learn about the new release date or the features of this much-awaited open source CMS. With the project now in its API completion phase, the next step for Drupal 8 is a beta version release.

Although Drupal 8 is yet to make its way, it has already grabbed a lot of attention over the past year. SunTecOSS’ Drupal Web Development Experts shed some light on the so far known key features of Drupal 8, touted as the most futuristic version of Drupal.

#1 Enhanced Content Administration

• Drupal 8 features a WYSIWYG editor at the core which makes content administration easier for not so tech-savvy administrators. 

• Site owners will now not only be able to edit the content of their website from the front-end itself, but they will be able to do it from their Smartphones and Tablets.

#2 Multilingual Capabilities

• Drupal 8 is all about flexibility and versatility. • Users can build pages with view language

filtering and block visibility, translate anything in the system with the inbuilt user interface, and get translation updates from the Drupal community, automatically.

#3 Responsive to the word E

• The new Drupal 8 is responsive all through and features responsive inbuilt templates, making it easier for the owners to have a single website which is accessible on a variety of devices. 

• They can also provide a better mobile-browsing experience to their customers with the efficient caching of entities and smarter JavaScript loading of Drupal 8.

#4 HTML5 for Improved Markup

As Drupal 8 uses HTML5, it has proper native input tools on mobile for different fields like e-mail, date, etc., in comparison to Drupal 7 which uses XHTML.

#5 Enhanced ‘Views’, the add-on module

• ‘Views’ has been integrated deep into Drupal 8’s system. Along with the front page, several other administration pages are also a part of ‘Views’. 

• Users can now customize the front page, listing blocks, create custom filters and actions, and custom admin pages.

#6 Lesser Dependency on Modules

• Drupal 8 is an all-inclusive platform which reduces the dependency on additional Modules to enhance the functionality of a website.

• It gets rid of all the convoluted modules and refines the operational ease, efficiency and user-experience by only loading modules that are relevant to a particular page.

#7 Drupal 8 has got ‘Twig’

• The ‘Twig’ template engine brings greater security, a number of simplifications and makes it easy to design beautiful and functional Drupal sites, more than ever.

#8 Transport Configuration Changes Easily

• Keeping track of all the important details when the content is configured and revised is extremely easy with Drupal 8’s file system-based configuration management system. 

• Users can keep their files with configuration data separate from the production data in the database and transport configuration changes like new content types, fields, etc.

#9 Centralized Control for RIA

• Drupal 8 provides extensive support for standard accessibility technologies like WAI-ARIA. 

• The new Drupal 8 system will make use of jQuery UI’s modal dialogs and autocomplete. Also, several improvements have been made in the font sizes and colour contrast.

#10 Integrated Hypertext Application Language (HAL)

• Drupal 8 site owners will be able to build cross-platform and native mobile apps using Drupal as the data source. 

• As Drupal 8 implements Hypertext Application Language (HAL), users can showcase their website’s content as JSON or XML and ensure high-level of security with HTTP authentication.

Drupal 6 or 7 site owners who are eagerly waiting for the release of Drupal 8 will have to make tough decisions about upgrading their sites on Drupal 8.

For expert guidance on what you should do with your Drupal 6 or 7 site and for full-cycle Drupal Development Services, kindly get in touch with us at info@suntecoss.com.